We Remember || ONC2022

Chapter Nine

As promised, I'd visited Iris Chen the next morning. Pim had accompanied me, and it was a good thing too, because the practice had drained me enough that I could hardly walk afterwards. Lemon had been there, visiting her grandparents, and her calculating gaze assessed my hobbling form, her lips turned down in a frown.

I'd spent the rest of the day in my bed in the Tans' house, my body wracked in pain. But something else in me had begun healing in the process. As my magick pulled Iris's pain from her body, dispersing it as bubbles popping into nothing in the healing water, I felt some part of the violence I'd conjured in that storm clear my soul as well.

This morning Pim declared me well enough to go home, and she'd wrapped me in three layers of blankets and folded me into our motorbike's sidecar. As we were leaving, Celeste presented me with a basket of white daylilies cut from her garden. She suggested that I use the flowers as my offering to the Goddess. The blooms only lasted a day, she said, and suggested that I feel my guilt but let it only last as long.

I didn't know if that was possible, but I would make the offering just the same. Alder wanted to join me this morning, as it had been a day since we had seen each other, so I waited for him in my rocker on our back porch. Una sat sentinel at my feet.

After Pim's story the other night, Alder had returned home. Since I was awake, if not entirely better, he didn't want to push his luck with Layla by staying away any longer. It had only been in her shock, and perhaps fear, that she had allowed him to leave with me in his arms the day of the hurricane.

When Una stood, ears flicking upright in alertness, and then ran off, I figured that Alder had arrived. And only a moment later, she reappeared with a slightly sweaty, slightly harassed looking Alder, his hand bracing the slats of the house as he fought to catch his breath. I couldn't help but laugh at the sight of him.

"I take it you didn't enjoy the ride?" I'd had to leave my pedal bike in town, and Alder had volunteered to bring it back. I'd tried to convince him that it was happy where it was and I wouldn't be well enough to ride for a few days, anyway. But he'd insisted. I think he wanted to feel useful.

"I swear that thing is possessed by an imp," he said. "Never again." I just smiled up at him. He wiped his brow, rather dramatically, then leaned in to kiss me. "I'll just pop in to say hello to Pim."

As I waited for Alder, I watched a black-capped tern diving into the ocean for a fish. I closed my eyes and listened to the rushing waves and cacophonous birdsong. To the trilling kee-ar, kee-ar of the terns and the long mew of the gulls. I'd just about drifted off to the land of nod when Alder returned, a beach chair under each arm.

"I'll run these down and then be back to carry you," he said.

"No need." I stood, gripping the basket of daylilies in both hands. "I'm all right to walk."

"Wyn..."

"I could use the exercise," I said. And because I could see the argument forming on his lips, I added, "But you can carry me back."

"Deal," he said, a grin on his face like he'd won a prize.

"But when I'm feeling better, expect an arm wrestling challenge, since you seem to think I can't take care of myself."

"No way," he said. "I've seen your muscles."

And though it sent a painful zing through my chest, I laughed. Together, we made our way slowly over the dunes and rocky beach. I was wearing a long skirt, too long really as it had once belonged to Celeste, and it trailed behind me through the sand. It was made from a pale, diaphanous material and felt lovely against my legs, almost like wearing nothing. But better.